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By Gordon Bates, Historian in Residence, 免费黑料网.

The major advances in psychology that characterised the early decades of the twentieth century are usually considered in terms of the great thinkers that led them or the theories and institutions that they established: Freud and Jung’s analytic psychology, Thorndike and Watson’s behaviourism and Coué’s autosuggestion. However, there is another history that lies beneath these stories which are better known and more readily written. This is the story of non-institutional or ‘popular’ psychology¹: the ways that psychological ideas started to be spread and understood by the general public. Before the twentieth century, psychology was an obscure offshoot of academic philosophy, its vocabulary arcane and its relevance scarcely known by the majority. This was to change and change rapidly.

In Britain, at the start of the twentieth century, the spread of new ideas and information was through the printed word. A number of science writers started to use newspapers, periodicals and books to broadcast the applications of the new science. This was time of the birth of the self-help book. For example: Richard Harte’s The New Psychology or the Secret of Happiness (1903), Stanton Kirkham’s The Philosophy of Self-Help: an Application of Practical Psychology to Daily Life (1909) and Arnold Bennett’s Mental Efficiency (1912).

Correspondence Courses in Psychology

A less obvious but potentially much more lucrative way of tapping into this newfound interest in psychology was to provide correspondence courses in the new learning. Anyone reading the occult, spiritual and magic periodicals of the day or even the mainstream gentleman’s periodicals will be struck by the number of small ads selling these courses. The majority of these ads originated from the United States where the lax regulatory structures meant that anyone could set up as an educational body and ignore copyright by reprinting or loosely rewriting bona fide psychology texts as coursework. The king and queen of the mail-order psychology swindle were Elmer Sidney Prather (1872-1939) and his wife Abigail Beatrice McKean Prather (1877-1957?).

Elmer and Abigail Prather

Images: Elmer Prather (1920) from United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925 [New York, United States, source certificate #168202] and Abigail Prather (Source: IAPSOP, Marc Demarest²)

Elmer Prather, who preferred to go by the name of ‘Professor’ Elmer Ellesworth Knowles, was born to a Nebraskan farming family. He had limited education and made his own way in life. He met Abigail in 1897, when they both worked as stage hypnotists as part of a touring entertainment troop. They left the group with Abigail’s brother Sam MacKean to tour their own highly successful hypnotism act for several years. In 1905, they settled in New York and started the mail-order scams that would make their fortunes. They charged between $1 and $10 dollars for a correspondence course in hypnotism or suggestive therapeutics, which was the new psychology rather than a form of stage entertainment. It was both a means of self-improvement and a way to influence others.

The Prathers became more grandiose. They administered a variety of quasi-educational organisations, initially based from a single New York office room. They ran the Modern Science Publishing Company, the Metropolitan Institute of Science, the National Institute of Sciences, the Progress League and the Psycho Success Club amongst others. The National Institute of Sciences offered doctorates in Suggestive Therapeutics, an early type of hypnotherapy.

Image: Certificate from the Metropolitan Institute of Sciences. Note the name of the secretary and misspelled name of the Treasurer and Charcot (Source: IAPSOP, Marc Demarest)

In 1909, the US Postal Service inspectors were getting very close to a successful prosecution of the Prathers for fraud, after two near misses. In addition, the Prathers’ advertising in foreign newspapers and journals meant that the majority of their income was from overseas³. After they were found to have assaulted and nearly killed an attorney who was serving papers on them, they quickly moved their operation to London. By 1911, the business was making a staggering $100, 000 a year and employed over 100 people. Employees in the German business alone were writing 5,000 letters a week⁴. While the Prathers had diversified into supplying astrology books, cosmetics and later dietary supplements, the majority of the money came from their courses in early psychology: hypnotism and suggestive therapy.

The Knowles Radio Hypnotic Crystal

Image: The Knowles Radio Hypnotic Crystal, image courtesy of Gordon Bates.

In 1914, their premium product was the Elmer E. Knowles Complete System of Influence and Healing which featured six lessons in influence and healing; personal magnetism; magnetic and distance healing; character reading; Hindu and Oriental hypnotism; and self-treatment and the cure of diseases and habits by employing the radio-hypnotic crystal.

The Knowles radio-hypnotic crystal is only 8cm long it contains glass, sand and a small metal antenna encased in an aluminium shell. It is completely inactive: it has no crystals and no radio or radioactive components (radioactive gadgets were highly fashionable at the time). It was offered for sale as part of the Knowles correspondence course. It was supposed to be used to focus the mind to facilitate auto-suggestion, hypnotism and distance healing. A few years back, I was delighted to find an example on eBay and purchase one: a symbol of the highpoint of suggestion in popular psychology. The Knowles radio-hypnotic crystal will go on display in the new Cabinet of Curiosities in the reception area of the 免费黑料网 in April 2025.

Sources

1. Lesley Hearnshaw, A Short History of British Psychology, 1840-1940. (London: Routledge, 1986).
2. Marc Demarest. Latent powers, latent demand. A look at the mail-order occult in Anglo-American culture 1895-1920. The international association for the preservation of spiritualist and occult periodicals: Forest Grove; 2017. http://www.ehbritten.org/docs/dema rest_popular_occulture_july_2017.pdf [accessed 1 March 2018)
3. Marc Demarest, ‘The (Mail-Order Occult) Ring Saga, Episode Four: Seven Cities of Gold’, The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals. https://ehbritten.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-mail-order-occult-ring-saga-episode.html?q=prather [accessed 14 February 2025].
4. Bernard Petitdant, ‘Professor Elmer Ellesworth Knowles and its [sic] Radio Hypnotic Crystal’, Kinésithérapie, la revue, 20, 2020 (pp. 41-44).

My thanks to Marc Demarest of IAPSOP for directing me to this incredible story and for the use of the pictures from his blog.